The developer’s ad for 9-15 Clifford St, Suffolk Park (4 November) has a lot of misleading and incorrect information. Here are just some examples.
The ad says ‘Shops’, but the documents state there will be a 60-seat restaurant plus a 30-seat cafe, each open 7am–10pm, seven days per week.
The ad champions their ‘affordable housing’ credentials. But they are demolishing nine 2–3 bedroom houses of modest rent and replacing them with three tiny units (1x 1-bed and 2x 2-bed). These they are the three smallest and worst units of them all, in contravention of good planning principles from the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure. All face south on to Clifford Street, so not much privacy, and are above the noisy restaurant and cafe. And they will only be affordable for 15 years.
The ad says ‘Parking exceeds requirements’. Technically this is correct, but the six luxury 3-4 bed houses (each with a pool) all have their own double garage. So that’s 12 spots, though the formula says they only need nine. So the people in the ten units (18 bedrooms in total) get to share the remaining five spots.
The 60-seat restaurant (+6 staff), the 30-seat restaurant (+3 staff) and any visitors/tradies/delivery vehicles for units/shops get 14 spots to share. The parking spots are accessed via one six-metre-wide driveway for both directions. So is another four spots generous?
The ad says ‘fully compliant’, but there’s not enough open space, even if they are allowed to count their inappropriate public art amongst trees as ‘open space’. ‘Attachment 30 – Apartment Design Guide Table of Assessment’, page 6.
See linktr.ee/CliffordStDA for more info.


For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling.